Search Marketing News

New Rich Result Type – Question and Answer Google has launched new Q&A Rich Results to quickly present users with answers to question based queries. The question and answer results are in addition to other types of rich results on Google such as reviews, recipe cards and knowledge panels. The news was released on the Google…

Google Discover Roll Out Last year Google introduced Google Feed to surface relevant content to mobile users. Dramatic growth has seen more than 800 million people each month use the feed to stay up to date with their interests and hobbies online. On September 24, Google announced that Google feed will be replaced by Google…

Does Anchor Text Effect Site Rankings? In a recent Google Hangout session, John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, discussed if anchor text can directly affect a site’s rankings. Good internal linking practices have always been seen as a basic component of SEO and anchor text is a large part of this. What is Anchor…

Google Release New Voice Search Schema Google have launched a new voice search or “speakable” structured data to adapt to the rise in voice search. This structured data is code which can be added to your content to mark up sections which may be most relevant to be read aloud by a digital assistant. This is…

Webspam Report – Google Reduces Spam Links By Nearly Half Google’s annual Webspam Report has recently been released, highlighting a series of statistics from their battle against “web spam” throughout 2017. What is Web Spam? Google defines “spam” as any action which violates the Webmaster Guidelines. The amount of spam sites currently in search…

As you will know, during May the hot topic of GDPR became a reality. There has been much talk of the “email bombardment” leading up to this but now Google have had their say on website reaction post-deadline. Since 25th May, many websites have chosen to display a notice detailing their privacy policy and GDPR…

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect on 25 May 2018. It applies to every business that holds, collects and stores personally identifiable information about EU citizens. The Economist recently called personal data ‘the world’s most valuable resource’. It’s so valuable, that according to UK Government statistics, nearly half of all UK businesses…

Google have begun rolling out the new version of Search Console – formerly Webmaster Tools – to all sites this year after many months of Beta testing. The new Search Console features a much cleaner, modern appearance with the data laid out in a more interactive way. For those who use Adwords, you will notice…

Google have announced that they will introduce flexible sampling to subscription based publications, in order to help increase their potential subscription rate. This new program comes in two forms, lead in or metering. The lead in format shows a part of the article without exposing all the content while metering provides visitors with a series…

Major Ranking Fluctuations Fuel Algorithm Update Rumours The search marketing industry has been alive, once again, with rumours of a major Google algorithm update. Significant ranking fluctuations, which far exceed those that can be attributed to background noise, have been occurring since June 25th. The suggestion that a notable algorithm update is being rolled out…

Nine months ago this figure stood at only 30%, which shows continuing adoption of SSL protocols In a recent article on the Moz blog, Dr. Pete Meyers discussed how more and more results on the first page of Google (based on a 10,000 strong keyword data set) are secure websites. The fact that this number…

This week we met up with our China SEO Partner seo.com.cn to discuss all things related to SEO in China. Xuming He, the founder of SEO China, visited our head offices here in Sheffield and we had a fantastic afternoon with him where we shared our insights of the UK market and in turn he…

Digital ad spend in the UK has gone past a significant threshold, reaching £10.3bn in 2016, an increase of 17.3%. A report released by the Internet Advertising Bureau UK and PwC indicates it is the highest annual growth rate for nine years. The last time annual growth was higher was in 2007 (38pc). Marketing budgets…

We thoroughly enjoyed the BrightonSEO talks this year. Held twice a year, it brings together some of the best speakers in the world of search. Content strategy driving an SEO campaign was a key theme touched upon in many of the talks. Here are ten of the main pointers we took from the BrightonSEO sessions…

The threat of site hacking, or hackers affecting your online business continues to grow as the number of compromised websites increased further during last year. Findings reported in Google’s #NoHacked review show that approximately 32% more sites were hacked when compared to the previous year. Fortunately, 84% of webmasters that applied for reconsideration were successful…

Two Major Google Updates Over February At the beginning of February Google rolled out a new algorithm update which had an effect on their processing of backlinks. Some webmasters reported a high fluctuation in search rankings for their sites, with some sites benefiting massively from the update and some losing rankings. One week after this on the…

A serious vulnerability has been discovered in some of Cloudflare’s services. Cloudflare is used by a huge number of websites on the internet, mainly to improve speed and security. An estimated 4 million domains may have been leaking private information since September, some of which has been crawled and indexed by search engines. Confirmed cases…

Here’s our roundup of some of the latest developments in search: Intrusive Interstitial Mobile Penalty Goes Into Effect Google have been rolling out their new ranking penalty which targets “pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results”. The ranking penalty was first announced in August….

We’ve been gazing into our crystal balls and planning for 2017. Here is what we think will be big this year in the ever-changing world of search marketing. Mobile Comes First With the percentage of people using mobiles to search growing, Google are moving to prioritise mobile devices: mobile-first indexing was announced in November 2016 and…

Here’s our take on “The Night Before Christmas”….Season’s Greetings everyone! Twas the night before Search-mas, and all through the office, Not a creature was stirring, not even a Laurence. The Meta was placed in the title tag with care, In hopes that St. Google soon would be there. Young Steve was dosing in his office…

John Mothersole, Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council, officially opened the doors to The SEO Works’ new offices this week. We recently moved to a new space that will allow us to grow further. It was great to meet John and discuss the role of digital in new business, whilst presenting our company and the…

We have a guest speaker slot at the forthcoming ‘Marketing Maestros’ event, presented by ‘Inspiring Entrepreneurs’. Speaking at the event will be Managing Director – Ben Foster, along with our Senior SEO Account Manager – Brett Nockalls, who will be presenting the pre-launch of our brand new product we have specifically designed for local businesses….

Google have just released a new transparency report which contains details of the volume of copyright complaints they receive. It appears that year by year, the number of requests has increased by a staggering amount. The figures show that so far in 2016 (September) over 342,000 sites have been affected by copyright complaints and over…

The SEO Works have recently moved to new larger offices, located at Metis on Scotland Street. We found it necessary to move and find a space that will allow us to grow further, to meet the demand for high quality digital marketing services. Our new open plan offices allow the marketing teams to work in…

The dramatic impact that a position on the first page of results can have to a business has given companies like Google (who hold an 86.75% share of the UK search market) an enormous amount of influence over the shape of the World Wide Web. When a query can be answered by more than one…

We are well aware of Google’s ongoing legal troubles with European government. Possibly the most dramatic being the raid of Google’s Paris offices back in May, as part of a long running investigation into their tax affairs. In the latest exchange, the European commission, which is the executive body of the European Union, has proposed…

Google has added several new features to their search engine to ensure you get a quick and easy fixtures from the Olympics. For some searches related to the event, Google has added a new “hub” to their search results that will provide you with medal counts, event times, athlete information and TV schedule times. This…

Think you know a thing or two about Google? We sure do, but even we didn’t know most of these 10 facts about Google. Prepare to be blown away! 1. 16% of Google’s daily searches are ones Google has not seen before Out of all the searches that have been made since Google was released…

“Every year there are trillions of searches on Google.com and over half of those searches happen on mobile. “ This is the statement made by Google during their recent performance summit, confirming that the global search volume for all queries is two trillion (2,000,000,000,000) or more. This is the first confirmation Google has made of its…

Since it’s data removal from Google Webmaster Tools back in 2009, and the lack of updates since late 2013, the removal of PageRank has not come as a surprise to us in the SEO industry. However it will have an impact on how we evaluate websites when building upon and refining the backlink profiles of our clients’ websites….

We’re delighted to announce that The SEO Works is a finalist in the Prolific North Awards 2016! The fourth annual Prolific North Awards will celebrate excellence and recognise and reward outstanding campaigns and exceptional talent in the creative and media industries across the North. We’re a finalist in the Best SEO and PPC Agency category….

Are you looking for a new opportunity or looking to take the next step in your digital career? As an award winning digital agency we are constantly looking to add to our dedicated account management team, recruiting in roles across various disciplines. View more about the roles we are looking for, benefits, and what is…

Earlier this month, the Google Search Quality Team put out a warning to webmasters who repeatedly violate the terms of their Guidelines, with more severe consequences threatened for sites which are obviously spam-focused. Writing on the Webmaster Central Blog, the post initially outlines the general process of submitting a reconsideration request when your site has…

Last week Apple announced that they have created a way for content that appears in Apps to be indexed and searched on all Apple devices, using Spotlight and Siri. ‘Apple Search’ for iOS9 will allow indexing of deep-app content by using a trio of indices to organise app screens and formulate them into search results…

Google has launched the Search Analytics Report within Webmaster Tools as a long-term replacement for the Search Queries report. Although the new tool, which is currently in Beta, inherently fulfils the same purpose, it provides a far greater amount of functionality in terms of the data it collects and how that data can be viewed…

Whether you’re creating a website for the first time or redesigning your existing site, it’s important not to forget about Search Engine Optimisation. If you’re in the process of a redesign, then you don’t want all the good rankings you’ve built up over the years to be lost because your new site isn’t properly optimised….

More known for their reasonably priced pasties than their online presence, Greggs has been causing a stir this week as a Google mix up resulted in a rather insulting change of image. On Tuesday, when searching for their favourite supplier of baked goods, Googlers were surprised to find that Greggs’ usual slogan of ‘Always Fresh….

Matt Cutts announced a few days ago that he was taking a leave of absence for the whole of October and maybe longer. On his blog he says that it was something he and his Wife agreed he would do a long time ago to allow them to spend more time together away from work….

Google has announced that they are putting into place a mechanism that will allow people to request removal of links that are no longer relevant and could be damaging. The website went live on Google earlier today and will follow a strict process of requesting that links to potentially damaging or embarrassing material from the…

In a recent Webmaster tools video Matt Cutts talks about a couple of mistakes that Google have made in the past. Aside from being nice to see that the search giant is human after all, Matt Cutts highlighted two examples that came to mind. He explains that Google should have acted quicker to snuff out…

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